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Creationists, 6 June 2007

Memo to the Creation Museum: STILL DUMB.

Yes, it's time to pick up where we left off yesterday, in our virtual tour of the virtual tour of the Blissiest Place On Earth*, the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Sure, it's fun to mock their snack bar and their ten-book-curriculum bookstore, but what about the exhibits? Where, as they say, is the six-thousand-year-old beef?

For example, did you know the Creation Museum, inexplicably, has a small planetarium? The incredibly creatively named "Stargazer's Planetarium", in fact. As you'd imagine, since creationism's version of cosmology treats the entire rest of the universe as a first-day afterthought to the Earth, the program is a lot of "stars are pretty, YAY GOD" mixed with a bit of "Doppler was a heathen" pseudoscience. See, distant starlight isn't really millions of years old. Planets are just making the light go faster, tricking all those scientists into embracing Satan.

Or, at least that's what I can extrapolate from the descriptive text of Zachary Lynn, who also informs us that "The planetarium program is very flashy, and supposedly was changed by an on-site tech crew to add "more detail" such as clouds casting shadows on Earth's surface." Which implies that without this technological innovation, visitors to the Creation Museum may have left without realizing that clouds cast shadows on the Earth's surface.

Moving on to the Ranger Station, where you learn that the Grand Canyon cannot possibly be hundreds of thousands of years old. As we've seen before, creationists get hung up about the Grand Canyon, because it's the kind of epic evidence against Earth: 6K that even the average American can grasp. Anyway, there's some bullshit about missing strata and the usual hokum. This ain't talk.origins, so I won't be doing any elaborate debunkings. I did want to point out this little detail from Zachary Lynn's description, though. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Most exhibits are taught through video instead of large signs filled with text. This was obviously done to attract a crowd that doesn't enjoy reading (probably much of today's society)... Some videos move slower than you could read a sign..." I think at this point, I'll simply pause and allow you, the reader, to construct one of the thousands of possible jokes this quote could inspire. Think of it as my very own interactive exhibit.

Next up is the Dinosaur Dig Site. Creationist archaeology has to walk a fine line, because kids love dinosaurs. You can't tell kids that God hates dinosaurs, because then kids will hate God. And if kids hate God, who's going to show up on Sundays in 20 years? Nobody.

So the Creation Museum has dinosaurs, and fossils, and archaeologists, and just explains to the kiddies that creation science and evolution science just have different "starting points" for the age of the Earth. Which is a lot like comparing a man looking at profiles on eHarmony with a man enjoying a post-coital cigarette. One is wishful thinking, and the other is a conclusion reached after lots of effort.

Starting points are a concept so ludicrous and unscientific, it's no surprise that the Creation Museum devotes an entire section to them. It goes into more detail about how the flood killed the dinosaurs, and has, I shit you not, comparisons of "Human Reason" and "God's Word", the implication that one is clearly better than the other. Finally, something I can agree with creationists on, as long as we don't go into the slightest bit of further detail.

Our final stop on the tour today are the Biblical Authority and Biblical Relevance sections, because let's face it, this is pretty much the only "science" "museum" in the entire country that would think it's a great idea to have mannequins of Moses, an old guy carrying giant, Cloud-Strife's-Sword-scaled scrolls, and what I can only assume is one of the two grunge rockers Noah carried on his ark - he's got a beard, a harp, and what looks a lot like a plaid flannel robe.

But don't think the Creation Museum is all sweetness and coprolite, You see, unable to fill an entire two floors with creation science and statues of Moses, the designers of the exhibits decided to branch out in some slightly esoteric directions. Tune in tomorrow, same bat-shit time, same bat-shit channel.

*As in "ignorance is..."